NZ cleans up after quake that tore new fault line

By ROB GRIFFITH

Associated Press

POSTED: 10:10 p.m. HST, Sep 4, 2010

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — The powerful earthquake that smashed buildings, cracked roads and twisted rail lines around the New Zealand city of Christchurch also ripped a new 11-foot (3.5 meter) wide fault line in the earth's surface, a geologist said Sunday.

At least 500 buildings, including 90 downtown properties, have been designated as destroyed in the 7.1-magnitude quake that struck at 4:35 a.m. Saturday (1635 GMT Friday) near the South Island city of 400,000 people. Most other buildings sustained only minor damage.

The quake cut power across the region, roads were blocked by debris and gas and water supplies were disrupted, but Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker said services were being restored Sunday.

Power was back to 90 percent of the city and water supply had resumed for all but 15 to 20 percent of residents, he said. Portable toilets had been provided and tanks of fresh water placed around the city for residents.

Parker said it would take a long time to fully fix some core services such as water and sewerage. "Our first priority is just people," he said. "That's our worry."

Up to 90 extra police officers had flown in to Christchurch to help, and troops were likely to join the recovery effort on Monday, he said.

On Sunday, specialist engineering teams began assessing damage to all central city buildings, said Paul Burns of the city's search and rescue service. Officials said schools across the region would remain closed for the next two days to allow time to check whether they were safe.

Only two serious injuries were reported from the quake as chimneys and walls of older buildings were reduced to rubble and crumbled to the ground. Prime Minister John Key said it was a miracle no one was killed.

Part of the reason the city escaped major injuries was because the quake happened before dawn, Key said.

"If this had happened five hours earlier or five hours later (when many more people were in the city), there would have been absolute carnage in terms of human life," he told TV One News Sunday.

Canterbury University geology professor Mark Quigley said what "looks to us that it could be a new fault" had ripped across the earth and pushed some surface areas up. The quake was caused by the ongoing collision between the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates, said Quigley, who is leading a team trying to pin down the source of the big quake.

"One side of the earth has lurched to the right ... up to 11 feet (3.5 meters) and in some places been thrust up," Quigley told National Radio.

"The long linear fracture on the earth's surface does things like break apart houses, break apart roads. We went and saw two houses that were completely snapped in half by the earthquake," he said.

Roger Bates, whose dairy farm at Darfield was close to the quake's epicenter 19 miles (30 kilometers) west of Christchurch, said the new fault line had ripped up the surface across his land.

"The whole dairy farm is like the sea now, with real (soil) waves right across the dairy farm. We don't have physical holes (but) where the fault goes through it's been raised a meter or meter and a half (3 to 5 feet)," he told National Radio.

"Trouble is, I've lost two meters (6 feet) of land off my boundary," he added.

Experts said the low number of injuries in the powerful quake also reflects the country's strict building codes.

Euan Smith, professor of Geophysics at Victoria University, speculated that the very soft soils of Christchurch had "acted like a shock absorber over a short period ... doing less damage to smaller buildings," he told The AP.

The prime minister, who flew to Christchurch to inspect the damage, said it was "an absolute miracle" that no one had died.

Key said the city "looks like something off a movies set," with wrecked buildings, buckled roads, busted water mains and sewerage systems and some flooding caused by broken water pipes.

Rebuilding infrastructure such as roads, water and sewerage systems "would be a major cost" that central government would have to meet, he said.

Canterbury Emergency Management Office manager Jon Mitchell said the central city would remain cordoned off with no public access before Monday, except for inner-city residents.

Scientists from GNS Science began installing extra seismographs in the region Sunday to record seismic data from the continuing stream of aftershocks rocking the region. More than 60 had been recorded by mid-afternoon Sunday.

Up to 40 portable seismographs were being set up, including some due from Stanford University in the U.S., the agency said.

Seismologists study aftershock sequences to help learn more about the mechanics of the main shock and rupture, and to check whether stress in the earth's crust has been transferred to other faults in the region.

New Zealand sits above an area of the Earth's crust where two tectonic plates collide. The country records more than 14,000 earthquakes a year — but only about 150 are felt by residents. Fewer than 10 a year do any damage.

New Zealand's last major earthquake registered magnitude 7.8 and hit South Island's Fiordland region on July 16, 2009, moving the southern tip of the country 12 inches (30 centimeters) closer to Australia, seismologist Ken Gledhill said at the time.